Chapter 4: Amnesia
670 Words
Luka's Pov
"She doesn't remember anything."
I stand in the doorway of my study with Mrs Aldea's words sitting somewhere in my chest and I don't move for a moment.
"She woke up looking confused and scared," Mrs Aldea says.
She turns and goes back down the hall. I follow her.
The door to the medical looking at the window. The light is grey and early, the snow outside catching it, and she hasn't heard me yet.
I stop in the doorway.
I don't hesitate at doors. It is not something I do.
I stand in the doorway.
Her scent reaches me from here. My wolf lifts his head.
She looks small in the bed. Not frail.
My breath catches.
She turns and sees me.
Green eyes. Confused, direct, careful, working very hard at something.
I come into the room.
"Y-you found me," she says. Her voice comes out small.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"The ravine. East path. The storm caught you in the dark." I pour water from the jug on the side table and turn to hand it to her.
She reaches for the glass.
Our fingers touch.
It starts at my fingertips and it doesn't stop. Up my arm, through my chest, up the back of my neck, and my wolf comes off the floor like something detonated inside him. Heat floods from my spine outward. Her scent wraps around me and pulls and the three feet between us suddenly feels like a distance I have been wrongly tolerating for a very long time.
I don't move.
Her eyes widen. Just slightly. Just for a second.
I let go of the glass.
She wraps both hands around it and looks down at it. I look at the side table. I take one step back. My wolf slams forward. I take another step. He slams forward again, harder, and I stand there and breathe and do not take a third step because I don't trust what comes after it.
"You're safe here," I say. "Stay as long as you need."
She looks up at me. "I don't know who I am."
"I know."
"What do I do?"
I look at her face. The answer comes the same way it came last night, before she was awake to receive it.
"Anything," I say.
She tries it. Her mouth moves slightly around the shape of it, testing it the way you test a step before you put your weight on it.
"Anything," she says back.
Something about hearing it in her voice undoes something in me I didn't know was held together.
My wolf presses every wall I have at once. Her scent is everywhere in this room now, warmer than last night, something underneath it that wraps around my spine and pulls low and insistent and I feel it in my gut, in my blood, somewhere below thought entirely. My jaw tightens. I am very aware of every inch between us. My wolf is not interested in inches. My wolf wants none.
It rings again.
She glances at my pocket. Then up at me.
"You should get that," she says. Quiet. Almost careful, like she's not sure she's allowed to say it.
The sound of her voice does not help.
There is something knotted low in my stomach, hot and pulled tight, the kind of thing that has nothing to do with reason and everything to do with what she is to me, what my wolf has already decided she is. I want to cross the room. I want to be closer. I want....
I stop that thought exactly where it is.
She is sitting in a hospital bed. She doesn't know her own name. She has no idea what I am.
It rings again.
I look at her once more. Both hands around the glass. The grey light. The snow catching it behind her.
I answer the call.
"I'll be there," I say, and I walk out, and I don't look back, because if I look back I won't go.
- Writer
